Why Game of Thrones Is Better on TV

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After every episode of Game of Thrones, a group of book devotees gathers under the auspices of The Podcast of Ice and Fire for more than an hour of nitpicking. I am allowed to call it that for one simple reason: I am also a nitpicker. Every Sunday, my own Thrones blog becomes a font of complaints on such critically important topics as this: Jaime Lannister said the last Targaryen dragon was the size of a loaf of bread, but the books – clearly! – state that it was the size of a "mastiff."

And yet, even the most devoted book fan has to admit that, barring the completely reimagined Robb Stark storyline, they are getting the big things right over at HBO, and even exceeding the books on some counts.

George R.R. Martin, author of the series, is a master of the inner monologue -- chapter upon delicious chapter of it. But the show has no time for that. So long-running, sublime plots get bluntly spelled out, thoughts become words, background descriptions become stories told. Daenerys Targaryan's storyline in book two consisted of going to each of the lords of Qarth and being turned away. Hardly compelling television, so they added her dragons being stolen and a plot by Xaro Xhoan Daxos to become the king of Qarth. Ending with a brutal round of throat slittings, it made for great television, even if I disagreed with some of its implications.

The world of Westeros in the books is full of grey characters carefully sketched out over time through the eyes of people with all kinds of motives. If you have the mettle, you can parse the reliable narrators from the unreliable, the rumors from the facts. But that's not why they invented the television. For the show, characters need to be blacker or whiter so that you have someone to root for, or against. A show fan may hate Littlefinger for being the psychopath that he revealed himself to be, while a book fan may enjoy not knowing for sure. They only have ten episodes to work with, after all, and the slow buildup that a novel enjoys simply doesn't make for interesting television.

Any complaints with the show, changes or otherwise, can miss the forest through the weirwoods (that was for you book readers). This is, after all, a daunting undertaking by HBO. In these days of making movies based on board games, we should be incredibly thankful that someone in Hollywood not only decided to distill a 1,600-page book into twenty hours of television, but they also made it compelling to the people who know the material best. Of course mistakes will be made, but the fact that they've managed to hit at least 85% of the mark is amazing.

With a projected seven season run with four-and-a-half books left to cover, it remains to be seen how well they can keep it up. Book four, after all, grew so verbose that it had to be split in two, yet HBO proposes just one season to cover it all. While, on the other hand, Martin's last two installments of the book series lack some of the large set pieces of their predecessors. There's no battle on the Blackwater, no Dany loosing her dragons on sneering slavers. On the bright side, that may be what makes it possible after all. Less CGI and extras marching through a Croatian forest means less strain on the budget. And that means a chance for a fifteen episode season, allowing them to fit in even more of those grey characters' machinations.

Thomas Fichtenmayer is the author of a spoiler-filled Tumblr obsessed with the characters of the Game of Thrones, especially Stannis Baratheon.